A microwave "pain ray" energy weapon, deemed too controversial for US military use in Iraq, has nonetheless gone into service. A trial installation is in use at a prison in Los Angeles for the purpose of quelling fights among the inmates.
"We hope that this type of technology will either cause an inmate to stop an assault or …

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Protection..

Bad Idea.

Metal and microwaves do not mix, especially on the body. Why else would they tell you not to throw metal in a nuker? They tend to absorb and channel electromagnetic energy (of which microwaves are a part), which cause the signature arcing that are usually a sign your oven is taking a serious hit. I imagine a person wearing a foil hat (be it tin or aluminum) would start to get a serious headache once that think cranks up.

I imagine-

that this will look like a dalek device, with scary looking disks along the barrel, perhaps a glowing helix or a small parabolic reflector somewhere on it. Plus silvery globes in different sizes in scary SF clusters.

Sir

Re: not too surprising

Ah, that old chestnut.

You'll be talking about exposed core or "dumdum" rounds, designed to flatten on impact. Banned for military use, totally legal for civil use. Also used by preference by the majority of the world's police forces and with good reason. When shooting at a miscreant in a civil environment it is extremely undesirable that the round fired passes through the target and on to hit anything else behind it! Best practice here is to have whatever it is give up most, if not all, its kinetic energy when it runs into the first thing encountered along its trajectory.

Meanwhile, the world's military have moved en masse to usiing deformable nose or "tumbling" bullets which, while still legal for military use, are far nastier as regards what they do to the poor bastard on the receiving end.

Horses for courses once you take the "ooo iz war crimez yes?" tabloid language out of it.

erm

What has expanding bullets got to do with anything?

Yes, they are used in hunting in ALL counties I can think of including the UK and by most police forces. If you're going to shoot something you want to kill it as quickly and cleanly as possible, that means using expanding ammo that increases hydraulic shock, and localised tissue damage, minimises pass-thru and ricochets and basically gets the job done.

No.

"You'll be talking about exposed core or "dumdum" rounds"

You're talking about hollow-point rounds, I think. I haven't heard anyone use the term "dumdum" rounds in a long time. They have a divot in the center of the bullet, nose-first, along with cuts down the sides to adjust how they expand.

"Meanwhile, the world's military have moved en masse to usiing deformable nose or "tumbling" bullets"

No, most of the militaries out there use either regular FMJ (full metal jacket) rounds or steel-core rounds. "Deformable" noses would be soft-point bullets, which are mostly used by hunters. Steel core rounds are for extra stability to the round as well as imparting a mild armor-piercing effect (although true AP rounds have hardened steel penetrator cores and a steel jacket).

Well, yes, shoot to kill

because you should never ever point a gun at someone you are not intending to kill. "Shoot-to-wound" isn't a wise policy, it leads to misses and possible hits on bystanders. Conversely, a police officer should not draw a gun in the first place unless he has made the decision to kill. After drawing he might not end up having to kill, which is great, but that gun should stay in it's holster until he has decided.

Instantly-blinding weapon

Why nobody mentions that? If you direct a milimeter wavelength beam at eyes, cornea and lens are going to be heated up very quickly (especially given lack of blood supply that could cool the latter down), and will darken just as in cataract.

You sure it's not "Yum!"

Stream'n'Scream

Stick a web cam on this, allow remote control over the Internet and you can get rid of all your prison guards in one go - just hand over monitoring and control of the prisons to the public. I for one would be willing to commit some of my time and bandwidth to this. Sure beats my USB foam missile launcher thing. Heck, bring this to the Wii and it's a great way to get the kids involved in justice.

And before any lefty-liberal starts crying about over the potential misuse of the system, you could have voluntary moderators who award points based on whether a blast of the ray was legitimate or over-judicious. Besides, Wikipedia etc has shown that despite the abusers, the Internet is pretty good at governing itself.

@Marcus...

Shirley

Surely the act of wanting to mointor prisoners and to use this device is automatic grounds to bar them from this.

I would not want to be a colleague of someone who looked forward to spying on and hurting, at no risk to himself, someone who was trapped. Sort of like torturing rats in a maze. Rats aren't very nice, but legislation protects even them from wanton cruelty.

Complete tangent here

but rats are actually pretty cuddly, friendly and playful. Wild rats aren't so much, but then neither are wild dogs or wild cats. And rats in a maze generally aren't being tortured. So, um, simile fail all around.

I do agree completely though that actually wanting to use these devices should automatically bar one from ever using them.

Where do I sign up

Sounds cruel and unusual to me

Great idea.

I always thought we should have a Running Man-type prison system. Or Speedball, played with inmates - the survivors get to go free. Sell the TV rights to Sky, and the proceeds go to improving the prison system. Could be interesting :-)

Um

Most prisons in the US are run by the government . Prisons run by corporations in the US are not as common as some posters here think.

Oh to the people that think this device is barbaric you need to look at the alternative of not using this device . In places like the yard this is how it works when a fight breaks out . When the guard sees a fight he sounds an alarm. Any one still standing when the alarm goes off gets shot . In confined areas they send in a team. Any one still standing when the alarm goes off gets hit with a night stick.

Cell extractions. This when a prisoner refuses to come out of the cell. There are two options .

Option one the use of force. You have a cell extraction time rush in and use night sticks to get to comply , at this point he is dragged out and cuffed . Option two. You toss pepper spray in the cell. When the prisoner can't take it any more and comes out , the prisoner will be slammed to the ground and then cuffed .

"device" is a weapon, not a device.

"Oh to the people that think this device is barbaric you need to look at the alternative of not using this device "

Yes. Obviously you haven't.

Being shot is nothing compared to being cooked alive, eyes first. You try it and tell then which is more barbaric. I see this even worse than tazer, which is polices favorite toy nowdays: "see how they squirm funnily!" If the victim dies, it's an "accident" and no-one is prosecuted. Happens every other day in US alone.

Tazer leaves marks, this one doesn't so the reason to use it is even less than for tazer which is widely used for fun already, by the police.

Prison

@David Eddleman

San Quentin's in San Rafael (OK, it's technically it's own town, just East of Larkspur Landing, to be pedantic), on the lovely San Francisco Bay. Los Angeles is about 400 miles away to the South, by road.

Besides, the real wack-jobs are housed at Pelican Bay, Corcoran & Atwater (at least here in California). San Quentin's main claim to fame is that it houses California's "Death Row", at least for male inmates.